‘My Heart Aches’ : Mothers in Judas Priest Trial Tell of Their Five-Year Ordeal

Aunetta Roberson and Phyllis Vance lived in the same suburb for years. Their husbands frequented the same casinos. Their sons attended--and dropped out of--the same school.

Outside of a few phone calls related to academic or legal problems their sons encountered, however, the women’s lives rarely crossed. About the only thing they had in common was their mutual hatred for the loud heavy-metal music that their sons played for hours in the sons’ rooms.

Yet on Dec. 23, 1985, the two women’s lives were united in tragedy.

On that day, Raymond Belknap, Roberson’s son, jammed the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. James, Phyllis Vance’s son, re-loaded the gun and turned it on himself.

Belknap died immediately. Vance’s self-inflicted shotgun blast tore away his nose, cheeks, jaw, tongue, teeth and gums. He died three years later.

Almost five years have passed since the day of the shootings, and Roberson says she still hates to discuss her son’s death. She said she doubts if she will ever get over it.

“Burying my son at such an early age was an awful experience,” Roberson said. “Sometimes I still expect him to come walking through the door. It’s difficult to accept that I will never see my boy again.”

Phyllis Vance, James’ mother, sums her loss up in three words:

“My heart aches.”

Today, the mothers are united in a court case here in which they blame the British heavy metal quintet Judas Priest for the deaths of their sons. They are attempting to prove in the case--which has received international attention--that covert messages allegedly implanted in the band’s 1978 album, “Stained Class,” played a crucial factor in the shootings.

Yet the women still seem separated.

The mothers of the dead youths do not socialize and deal with the stress of the suit differently.

Escorted by her attorney, Vance, 43, attends the trial daily. Roberson, 44, avoids the Washoe District Courthouse as much as possible. As soon as she finished testifying, the veteran casino card dealer escaped to the mountains for 10 days of camping.

Roberson, a single parent who still has three daughters at home, said she’s so weary of negative press reports that she refuses to read a newspaper or watch television until the trial ends.

Attorneys for both Judas Priest and its record company, CBS Records, have denied using subliminal messages. In turn, they have maintained that the suicide attempts may have been caused by longstanding personal problems and implied that the suit may have been motivated by greed.

In their first extended interviews since the trial began July 16, the mothers defended both their motives and what they see as their sons’ honor.

“We’re not the ones making the big bucks here--CBS is,” Phyllis Vance, the mother of James Vance, said here as the trial ended its third week last Friday.

“They live off of young fans like my son, kids who invest all their money in bands like Judas Priest,” Vance, a spunky born-again Christian, said. “James was my only child. He was my life. All the money in the world couldn’t bring him back.”

Aunetta Roberson, the mother of Raymond Belknap, agreed.

“I don’t care about the money. We need to get this thing over with so we can get on with our lives,” she said in a separate interview. “The fact is, whether the judge rules in our favor or not, I feel like we’ve already won.

“This case has brought so much public attention to the issue. The problems with heavy metal music are finally out in the open. Bands are beginning to be censored and I’m happy about it. I think the record industry is going to be more careful from now on.”

They were even more outspoken on the way their sons have been presented in the media during the trial. Citing sworn depositions, police reports and the testimony of psychological experts, the defense has sought to portray the youths as violent substance abusers, plagued by troubled upbringings and uncertain futures.

“They act like our kids were lunatics living on the fringe,” Vance said, snuggling into a leather chair in her attorney’s office. “Experimentation with drugs, although it is not something I approve of, is common among teen-agers.”

Roberson added, “They have made my son out to look like some despicable drug-crazed loser and it’s just not true. Nothing is ever written about the good things he did for me or his sisters. No one writes anything about the love in our family.”

Still, attorneys for the band and CBS point to problems in the youth’s background.

“These weren’t just ordinary young men,” said Shawn Meador, one of the attorneys representing CBS in the trial. “The facts that have been introduced into court demonstrate that these young men had extraordinary behavioral and drug abuse problems.”

When Raymond Belknap, 18, and James Vance, 20, decided to turn a gun on themselves two days before Christmas in 1985, the Sparks, Nev., youths had no idea that the blood they spilled would set into motion an unprecedented legal case.

After spending several hours drinking beer, smoking pot and listening to Judas Priest music on that afternoon, Vance and Belknap suddenly began trashing everything in Belknap’s bedroom, according to court documents.

They then grabbed a sawed-off shotgun, leaped out the window and ran to a neighborhood churchyard, where the shooting occurred.

Belknap died immediately. Vance, horribly disfigured, survived three years of excruciating pain and experimental plastic surgery before lapsing into an unexplained coma on Thanksgiving day, 1988. He died six days later.

Four years ago, attorneys for the families filed a product-liability lawsuit against Judas Priest and CBS Records, the band’s record company, seeking a minimum of $3.6 million in damages to compensate for the deaths, medical bills and support for a child Vance fathered after the suicide attempt.

What’s to blame: subliminal messages and heavy metal music or those “extraordinary behavioral” problems?

Roberson has been married four times and was separated from her fourth husband when the shooting took place. During his youth, Belknap’s stepfather whipped him with a belt and physically abused the boy, according to court records.

Belknap showed no interest in school, and like Vance, dropped out in the 10th grade. Working a series of construction jobs, he acquired a sawed-off shotgun, a pellet gun, a .22 rifle and a dart gun.

He drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and, according to James Vance, experimented with amphetamines and cocaine. Still, his mother insists that Belknap was not a drug abuser.

“He paid room and board, helped around the house and always took part in family activities such as fishing, swimming and back-packing,” Roberson says.

Court records also show that Belknap stole $450 from his employer in 1984 and took a bus to Oklahoma to visit his natural father. He gave himself up to police and was placed on probation.

One week before the suicide, he was cited by authorities for shooting darts at a neighbor’s pet. In February, 1989, Rita Skulason, Roberson’s eldest daughter, also attempted suicide.

Looking back on the events leading up to her son’s suicide, Roberson says she thinks Belknap had one glaring fault. “When it came to making decisions, Ray did not know how to take the lead,” Roberson laments. “He was always a follower.”

The person who Belknap followed the most, Roberson says, was James Vance.

According to court documents, Vance’s biological father abandoned his 17-year-old mother while she was still pregnant with the boy.

Vance was held back to repeat the first and second grades. At the age of 7, he was sent to a therapist for tying a belt around his forehead and ripping out handfuls of his own hair during class. A year later, James tried to choke his mother while she was driving him home from school.

“My biggest problem with the school system was that they would say James’ behavioral problems came from home,” Mrs. Vance says. “No one would acknowledge that he had a learning disability until the sixth grade.”

In court reports, Emmit (Tony) Vance, the boy’s stepfather, is described as a “weekend alcoholic” with a gambling addiction. His mother, after going through a period where she “drank more than people thought was normal,” says she gave up alcohol in 1973.

Phyllis Vance testified that during James’ youth, she repeatedly hit the boy “more than a normal spanking” and eventually sought out a therapist to help her control her anger.

In 1978, she was warned by a school psychologist that a “high probability” existed for her son to “respond violently to stressful situations.” During his teens, James threatened his mother with a hammer, aimed a loaded pistol at her and attacked her with his fists.

Court records reveal that James experimented with marijuana, alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, angel’s dust, LSD and barbiturates. In the two years preceding his suicide attempt, he checked into a drug rehabilitation center, attended Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings and ran away from home 13 times.

Phyllis Vance blames the music.

“Heavy metal changed his personality,” she said. “When James started listening to Judas Priest, he lost all respect for authority.”

Alerting parents to the dangerous influence of heavy metal music, Vance says, is what motivated her to file the Judas Priest lawsuit in the first place.

Vance, who favors Christian music by artists such as Barry McGuire, claims she feels no animosity towards any of the members of Judas Priest. She says she prays for them daily.

If she wins her case, Vance says she intends to use her share of the money to set up a foundation to finance scientific research of subliminal messages and provide a shelter where parents could bring allegedly imperiled heavy metal fans to be deprogrammed.

“I don’t think we would have ever gotten as far as we have if it hadn’t been God’s will,” Vance said smiling. “The doctors told me James should have died immediately, but I believe God allowed him to live as long as he did so that the truth about this case could be revealed.

“I’m not worried about the outcome of the trial. The way I see it, all you have to do is tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And the truth will set you free.”